Genetic findings appear to confirm that the Romani "came from a single group that left northwestern India about 1,500 years ago."[62] Genetic research published in the European Journal of Human Genetics "revealed that over 70% of males belong to a single lineage that appears unique to the Roma."[63] They are a dispersed people, but their most concentrated populations are located in Europe, especially Central, Eastern and Southern Europe (including Turkey, Spain and Southern France). The Romani originated in northern India and arrived in Mid-West Asia and Europe around 1,000 years ago.[64] They have been associated with another Indo-Aryan group, the Dom people: the two groups have been said to have separated from each other or, at least, to share a similar history.[65] Specifically, the ancestors of both the Romani and the Dom left North India sometime between the 6th and 11th century.[64]

The Romani are widely known among English-speaking people by the exonymGypsies (or Gipsies), which some people consider pejorative due to its connotations of illegality and irregularity.[66]

Since the 19th century, some Romani have also migrated to the Americas. There are an estimated one million Roma in the United States;[7] and 800,000 in Brazil, most of whose ancestors emigrated in the 19th century from Eastern Europe. Brazil also includes a notable Romani community descended from people deported by the Portuguese Empire during the Portuguese Inquisition.[67] In migrations since the late 19th century, Romani have also moved to other countries in South America and to Canada.[68][page needed]

The Romani language is divided into several dialects which together have an estimated number of speakers of more than two million.[71] The total number of Romani people is at least twice as high (several times as high according to high estimates). Many Romani are native speakers of the dominant language in their country of residence or of mixed languages combining the dominant language with a dialect of Romani; those varieties are sometimes called Para-Romani.[72]

Frenchgitan, Englishgypsy, Spanishgitano, Catalangitano, Italiangitano, Turkishkipti, all from GreekΑἰγύπτιοςAigýptios "Egyptian" (corrupted form: ΓύφτοςGýftos), and Hungarianfáreónépe from Greek φαραώpharaó "pharaoh" – referring to their allegedly Egyptian provenance.[75] Usage of "gypsy" and similarly derived words differs between groups as some Roma groups use this word as a self-identifier while others consider this word a racial slur.

Rom means man or husband in the Romani language. It has the variants dom and lom, related with the Sanskrit words dam-pati (lord of the house, husband), dama (to subdue), lom (hair), lomaka (hairy), loman, roman (hairy), romaça (man with beard and long hair).[79] Another possible origin is from Sanskrit डोम doma [member of a low caste of travelling musicians and dancers].

In the Romani language, Rom is a masculine noun, meaning 'man of the Roma ethnic group' or 'man, husband', with the plural Roma. The feminine of Rom in the Romani language is Romni. However, in most cases, in other languages Rom is now used for people of all genders.[80]

Romani is the feminine adjective, while Romano is the masculine adjective. Some Romanies use Rom or Roma as an ethnic name, while others (such as the Sinti, or the Romanichal) do not use this term as a self-ascription for the entire ethnic group.[81]

Sometimes, rom and romani are spelled with a double r, i.e., rrom and rromani. In this case rr is used to represent the phoneme/ʀ/ (also written as ř and rh), which in some Romani dialects has remained different from the one written with a single r. The rr spelling is common in certain institutions (such as the INALCO Institute in Paris), or used in certain countries, e.g., Romania, to distinguish from the endonym/homonym for Romanians (sg. român, pl. români).[82]

A Romani wagon pictured in 2009 in Grandborough Fields in Warwickshire (Grandborough Fields Road is a popular spot for travelling people)

In the English language (according to the Oxford English Dictionary), Rom is a noun (with the plural Roma or Roms) and an adjective, while Romani (Romany) is also a noun (with the plural Romani, the Romani, Romanies or Romanis) and an adjective. Both Rom and Romani have been in use in English since the 19th century as an alternative for Gypsy[citation needed]. Romani was initially spelled Rommany, then Romany, while today the Romani spelling is the most popular spelling. Occasionally, the double r spelling (e.g., Rroma, Rromani) mentioned above is also encountered in English texts.

The term Roma is increasingly encountered,[83][84] as a generic term for the Romani people.[85][86][87]

Because all Romanies use the word Romani as an adjective, the term became a noun for the entire ethnic group.[88] Today, the term Romani is used by some organizations – including the United Nations and the US Library of Congress.[82] However, the Council of Europe and other organizations consider that Roma is the correct term referring to all related groups, regardless of their country of origin, and recommend that Romani be restricted to the language and culture: Romani language, Romani culture.[80]

The English term Gypsy (or Gipsy) originates from the Middle Englishgypcian, short for Egipcien. The Spanish term Gitano and French Gitan have similar etymologies. They are ultimately derived from the GreekΑιγύπτιοι (Aigyptioi), meaning Egyptian, via Latin. This designation owes its existence to the belief, common in the Middle Ages, that the Romani, or some related group (such as the Middle Eastern Dom people), were itinerant Egyptians.[91][92] According to one narrative they were exiled from Egypt as punishment for allegedly harbouring the infant Jesus.[93] As described in Victor Hugo's novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame, the medieval French referred to the Romanies as Egyptiens. The word Gypsy in English has become so pervasive that many Romani organizations use it in their own organizational names.

This exonym is sometimes written with capital letter, to show that it designates an ethnic group.[94] However, the word is sometimes considered derogatory because of its negative and stereotypical associations.[86][95][96][97] The Council of Europe consider that 'Gypsy' or equivalent terms, as well as administrative terms such as 'Gens du Voyage' (referring in fact to an ethnic group but not acknowledging ethnic identification) are not in line with European recommendations.[80] In North America, the word Gypsy is most commonly used as a reference to Romani ethnicity, though lifestyle and fashion are at times also referenced by using this word.[98]

Another common designation of the Romani people is Cingane (alt. Tsinganoi, Zigar, Zigeuner), which likely derives from Athinganoi, the name of a Christian sect with whom the Romani (or some related group) became associated in the Middle Ages.[92][99][100][101]

For a variety of reasons, many Romanis choose not to register their ethnic identity in official censuses. There are an estimated 3.8 million Romani people in Europe (as of 2002),[102] although some high estimates by Romani organizations give numbers as high as 14 million.[103] Significant Romani populations are found in the Balkans, in some Central European states, in Spain, France, Russia and Ukraine. Several million more Romanies may live out of Europe, in particular in the Middle East and in the Americas.[104]

Like the Roma in general, many different ethnonyms are given to subgroups of Roma. Sometimes a subgroup uses more than one endonym, is commonly known by an exonym or erroneously by the endonym of another subgroup. The only name approaching an all-encompassing self-description is Rom.[105] Even when subgroups don't use the name, they all acknowledge a common origin and a dichotomy between themselves and Gadjo (non-Roma).[105] For instance, while the main group of Roma in German-speaking countries refer to themselves as Sinti, their name for their original language is Romanes.

Subgroups have been described as, in part, a result of the Hindu caste system, which the founding population of Rom almost certainly experienced in their South Asian urheimat.[105][106]

Many groups use names apparently derived from the Romani word kalo or calo, meaning "black" or "absorbing all light".[107] This closely resembles words for "black" or "dark" in Indo-Aryan languages (e.g., Sanskrit काल kāla: "black", "of a dark colour").[105] Likewise the name of the Dom or Domba people of North India – to whom the Roma have genetic,[108] cultural and linguistic links – has come to imply "dark-skinned", in some Indian languages.[109] Hence names such as kale and calé may have originated as an exonym or a euphemism for Roma.

Roma in Romania, commonly known by majority ethnic Romanians as Țigani, including many subgroups defined by occupation:

Boyash also known as Băieși, Lingurari, Ludar, Ludari, or Rudari, who coalesced in the Apuseni Mountains of Transylvania. Boyash or băieși is a Romanian word for "miners". Lingurari means "spoon makers",[115]Ludar,Ludari, andRudari may mean "woodworkers" or "miners".[116] (There is a semantic overlap due to the homophony or merging of lemmas with different meanings from at least two different languages: the Serbianrudar miner, and ruda stick, staff, rod, bar, pole (in Hungarianrúd,[117] and in Romanianrudă.[118]

The Roma people have a number of distinct populations, the largest being the Roma and the Iberian Calé or Caló, who reached Anatolia and the Balkans about the early 12th century, from a migration out of northwestern India beginning about 600 years earlier.[123][62] They settled in present-day Turkey, Greece, Serbia, Romania, Moldova, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Hungary and Slovakia, by order of volume, and Spain. From the Balkans, they migrated throughout Europe and, in the nineteenth and later centuries, to the Americas. The Romani population in the United States is estimated at more than one million.[124] Brazil has the second largest Romani population in the Americas, estimated at approximately 800,000 by the 2011 census. The Romani people are mainly called by non-Romani ethnic Brazilians as ciganos. Most of them belong to the ethnic subgroup Calés (Kale), of the Iberian peninsula. Juscelino Kubitschek, Brazilian president during 1956–1961 term, was 50% Czech Romani by his mother's bloodline; and Washington Luís, last president of the First Brazilian Republic (1926–1930 term), had Portuguese Kale ancestry.

There is no official or reliable count of the Romani populations worldwide.[125] Many Romani refuse to register their ethnic identity in official censuses for fear of discrimination.[126][better source needed] Others are descendants of intermarriage with local populations and no longer identify only as Romani, or not at all.

Findings suggest an Indian origin for Roma.[123][62][133] Because Romani groups did not keep chronicles of their history or have oral accounts of it, most hypotheses about the Romani's migration early history are based on linguistic theory.[134] There is also no known record of a migration from India to Europe from medieval times that can be connected indisputably to Roma.[135]

According to a legend reported in the Persian epic poem, the Shahnameh, from Iran and repeated by several modern authors, the Sasanian king Bahrām V Gōr learned towards the end of his reign (421–39) that the poor could not afford to enjoy music, and he asked the king of India to send him ten thousand luris, lute-playing experts. When the luris arrived, Bahrām gave each one an ox, a donkey, and a donkey-load of wheat so that they could live on agriculture and play music for free for the poor. But the luris ate the oxen and the wheat and came back a year later with their cheeks hollowed with hunger. The king, angered with their having wasted what he had given them, ordered them to pack up their bags and go wandering around the world on their donkeys.[136]

The linguistic evidence has indisputably shown that the roots of the Romani language lie in India: the language has grammatical characteristics of Indian languages and shares with them a large part of the basic lexicon, for example, regarding body parts or daily routines.[137]

More exactly, Romani shares the basic lexicon with Hindi and Punjabi. It shares many phonetic features with Marwari, while its grammar is closest to Bengali.[138]

Romani and Domari share some similarities: agglutination of postpositions of the second Layer (or case marking clitics) to the nominal stem, concord markers for the past tense, the neutralisation of gender marking in the plural, and the use of the oblique case as an accusative.[139] This has prompted much discussion about the relationships between these two languages. Domari was once thought to be a "sister language" of Romani, the two languages having split after the departure from the Indian subcontinent – but later research suggests that the differences between them are significant enough to treat them as two separate languages within the Central zone (Hindustani) group of languages. The Dom and the Rom therefore likely descend from two different migration waves out of India, separated by several centuries.[65][140]

In phonology, Romani language shares a number of isoglosses with the Central branch of Indo-Aryan languages especially in the realization of some sounds of the Old Indo-Aryan. However, it also preserves a number of dental clusters. In regards to verb morphology, Romani follows the exact same pattern of northwestern languages such as Kashmiri and Shina through the adoption of oblique enclitic pronouns as person markers, lending credence to the theory of their Central Indian origin and a subsequent migration to northwestern India. Though the retention of dental clusters suggests a break from central languages during the transition from Old to Middle Indo-Aryan, the overall morphology suggests that the language participated in some of the significant developments leading toward the emergence of New Indo-Aryan languages.[141]Numerals in the Romani, Domari and Lomavren languages, with Hindi and Persian forms for comparison.[142] Note that Romani 7–9 are borrowed from Greek.

Genetic findings in 2012 suggest the Romani originated in northwestern India and migrated as a group.[123][62][143] According to the study, the ancestors of present scheduled tribes and scheduled caste populations of northernIndia, traditionally referred to collectively as the Ḍoma, are the likely ancestral populations of modern European Roma.[144] In December 2012, additional findings appeared to confirm the "Roma came from a single group that left northwestern India about 1,500 years ago."[62] They reached the Balkans about 900 years ago[123] and then spread throughout Europe. The team found that, despite some isolation, the Roma were "genetically similar to other Europeans."[123][62]

Genetic evidence supports the medieval migration from India. The Romani have been described as "a conglomerate of genetically isolated founder populations,"[145] while a number of common Mendelian disorders among Romanies from all over Europe indicates "a common origin and founder effect."[145][146]

A study from 2001 by Gresham et al. suggests "a limited number of related founders, compatible with a small group of migrants splitting from a distinct caste or tribal group."[147] The same study found that "a single lineage… found across Romani populations, accounts for almost one-third of Romani males."[147] A 2004 study by Morar et al. concluded that the Romani population "was founded approximately 32–40 generations ago, with secondary and tertiary founder events occurring approximately 16–25 generations ago."[148]

Haplogroup H-M82 is a major lineage cluster in the Balkan Romani group, accounting for approximately 60% of the total.[149]Haplogroup H is uncommon in Europe but present in the Indian subcontinent and Sri Lanka.

A study of 444 people representing three different ethnic groups in the Republic of Macedonia found mtDNA haplogroups M5a1 and H7a1a were dominant in Romanies (13.7% and 10.3%, respectively).[150]

Y-DNA composition of Romani in the Republic of Macedonia, based on 57 samples:[151]

Y-DNA Haplogroup H1a occurs in Romani at frequencies 7–70%. Unlike ethnic Hungarians, among Hungarian and Slovakian Romani subpopulations, Haplogroup E-M78 and I1 usually occur above 10% and sometimes over 20%. While among Slovakian and Tiszavasvari Romani the dominant haplogroup is H1a, among Tokaj Romani is Haplogroup J2a (23%), while among Taktaharkány Romani is Haplogroup I2a (21%).[152] Five, rather consistent founder lineages throughout the subpopulations, were found among Romani – J-M67 and J-M92 (J2), H-M52 (H1a1), and I-P259 (I1?). Haplogroup I-P259 as H is not found at frequencies of over 3 percent among host populations, while haplogroups E and I are absent in South Asia. The lineages E-V13, I-P37 (I2a) and R-M17 (R1a) may represent gene flow from the host populations, excluding the Z93 branch of R1a, which is most frequent among Romani people in Turkey. Bulgarian, Romanian and Greek Romani are dominated by Haplogroup H-M82 (H1a1), while among Spanish Romani J2 is prevalent.[153] Among Kosovo and Belgrade Romani Haplogroup H prevails, while among Vojvodina Romani, H drops to 7 percent and E-V13 rises to a prevailing level.[154]

They may have emerged from the modern Indian state of Rajasthan,[162] migrating to the northwest (the Punjab region, Sindh and Baluchistan of the Indian subcontinent) around 250 BC. Their subsequent westward migration, possibly in waves, is now believed to have occurred beginning in about AD 500.[62]
It has also been suggested that emigration from India may have taken place in the context of the raids by Mahmud of Ghazni. As these soldiers were defeated, they were moved west with their families into the Byzantine Empire.[163] The author Ralph Lilley Turner theorised a central Indian origin of Romani followed by a migration to Northwest India as it shares a number of ancient isoglosses with Central Indo-Aryan languages in relation to realization of some sounds of Old Indo-Aryan. This is lent further credence by its sharing the exact same pattern of northwestern languages such as Kashmiri and Shina through the adoption of oblique enclitic pronouns as person markers. The overall morphology suggests that Romani participated in some of the significant developments leading toward the emergence of New Indo-Aryan languages, thus indicating that the proto-Romani did not leave the Indian subcontinent until late in the second half of the first millennium.[141][164]

The migration of the Romanies through the Middle East and Northern Africa to Europe

Though according to a 2012 genomic study, the Romani reached the Balkans as early as the 12th century,[165] the first historical records of the Romani reaching south-eastern Europe are from the 14th century: in 1322 after leaving Ireland on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, Irish Franciscan monk Symon Semeonis encountered a migrant group of Romani outside the town of Candia (modern Heraklion), in Crete, calling them "the descendants of Cain"; his account is the earliest surviving description by a Western chronicler of the Romani in Europe. In 1350 Ludolph of Saxony mentioned a similar people with a unique language whom he called Mandapolos, a word some think derives from the Greek word mantes (meaning prophet or fortune teller).[166] Around 1360, a fiefdom, called the Feudum Acinganorum was established in Corfu, which mainly used Romani serfs and to which the Romani on the island were subservient.[167] By the 1440s, they were recorded in Germany;[168] and by the 16th century, Scotland and Sweden.[169] Some Romani migrated from Persia through North Africa, reaching the Iberian Peninsula in the 15th century. The two currents met in France.[170]

First arrival of the Romanies outside Bern in the 15th century, described by the chronicler as getoufte heiden ("baptized heathens") and drawn with dark skin and wearing Saracen-style clothing and weapons [171]

Since a royal edict by Charles II in 1695, Spanish gypsies had been restricted to certain towns.[174] An official edict in 1717 restricted them to only 75 towns and districts, so that they would not be concentrated in any one region. In the Great Gypsy Round-up, Romani were arrested and imprisoned by the Spanish Monarchy in 1749.

During the latter part of the 17th century around the time of the Franco-Dutch War both France and Holland needed thousands of men to fight. Some recruitment took the form of rounding up vagrants and the poor to work the galleys and provide labour force for the armies. With this background, Gypsies were targets by both the French and the Dutch.

After the wars, and into the first decade of the 18th century, Gypsies were slaughtered with impunity throughout Holland. Gypsies, called ‘heiden’ by the Dutch, wandered throughout the rural areas of Europe and became the societal pariahs of the age. Gypsy-hunt or heidenjachten, translated as “heathen hunt” happened throughout Holland in an attempt to eradicate them.[175]

Although some Romani could be kept as slaves in Wallachia and Moldavia until abolition in 1856, the majority traveled as free nomads with their wagons, as alluded to in the spoked wheel symbol in the Romanies flag.[176] Elsewhere in Europe, they were subject to ethnic cleansing, abduction of their children, and forced labor. In England, Romani were sometimes expelled from small communities or hanged; in France, they were branded and their heads were shaved; in Moravia and Bohemia, the women were marked by their ears being severed. As a result, large groups of the Romani moved to the East, toward Poland, which was more tolerant, and Russia, where the Romani were treated more fairly as long as they paid the annual taxes.[177]

Romani began emigrating to North America in colonial times, with small groups recorded in Virginia and French Louisiana. Larger-scale Roma emigration to the United States began in the 1860s, with groups of Romanichal from Great Britain. The largest number immigrated in the early 1900s, mainly from the Vlax group of Kalderash. Many Romani also settled in South America.

They were often killed on sight, especially by the Einsatzgruppen (paramilitary death squads) on the Eastern Front.[179] The total number of victims has been variously estimated at between 220,000 and 1,500,000; even the lower figure would make the Porajmos one of the largest mass killings in history.[180]

The treatment of Romani in Nazi partner states differed markedly. In the Independent State of Croatia, the separatist Ustasa organization killed around 25,000 Roma, almost the entire Roma population. The concentration camp system of Jasenovac, run by the Ustasa militia and the Croat political police, were responsible for the deaths of between 15,000 and 20,000 Roma.[181]

In Czechoslovakia, they were labeled a "socially degraded stratum," and Romani women were sterilized as part of a state policy to reduce their population. This policy was implemented with large financial incentives, threats of denying future welfare payments, with misinformation, or after administering drugs.[182][183]

An official inquiry from the Czech Republic, resulting in a report (December 2005), concluded that the Communist authorities had practised an assimilation policy towards Romanis, which "included efforts by social services to control the birth rate in the Romani community. The problem of sexual sterilisation carried out in the Czech Republic, either with improper motivation or illegally, exists," said the Czech Public Defender of Rights, recommending state compensation for women affected between 1973 and 1991.[184] New cases were revealed up until 2004, in both the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Germany, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland "all have histories of coercive sterilization of minorities and other groups."[185]

The traditional Romanies place a high value on the extended family. Virginity is essential in unmarried women. Both men and women often marry young; there has been controversy in several countries over the Romani practice of child marriage. Romani law establishes that the man's family must pay a bride price to the bride's parents, but only traditional families still follow this rule.

Once married, the woman joins the husband's family, where her main job is to tend to her husband's and her children's needs, as well as to take care of her in-laws. The power structure in the traditional Romani household has at its top the oldest man or grandfather, and men in general have more authority than women. Women gain respect and authority as they get older. Young wives begin gaining authority once they have children.

Romani social behavior is strictly regulated by Hindu purity laws[186] ("marime" or "marhime"), still respected by most Roma (and by most older generations of Sinti). This regulation affects many aspects of life, and is applied to actions, people and things: parts of the human body are considered impure: the genital organs (because they produce emissions), as well as the rest of the lower body. Clothes for the lower body, as well as the clothes of menstruating women, are washed separately. Items used for eating are also washed in a different place. Childbirth is considered impure, and must occur outside the dwelling place. The mother is considered impure for forty days after giving birth.

Death is considered impure, and affects the whole family of the dead, who remain impure for a period of time. In contrast to the practice of cremating the dead, Romani dead must be buried.[187] Cremation and burial are both known from the time of the Rigveda, and both are widely practiced in Hinduism today (although the tendency is for Hindus to practice cremation, while some communities in South India tend to bury their dead).[188] Some animals are also considered impure, for instance cats because they lick their hindquarters. Horses, in contrast, are not considered impure because they cannot do so.[189]

Romanipen (also romanypen, romanipe, romanype, romanimos, romaimos, romaniya) is a complicated term of Romani philosophy that means totality of the Romani spirit, Romani culture, Romani Law, being a Romani, a set of Romani strains.

An ethnic Romani is considered a gadjo in the Romani society if he has no Romanipen. Sometimes a non-Romani may be considered a Romani if he has Romanipen. Usually this is an adopted child. As a concept, Romanipen has been the subject of interest to numerous academic observers. It has been hypothesized that it owes more to a framework of culture rather than simply an adherence to historically received rules.[190]

The ancestors of modern-day Romani people were previously Hindu, but adopted Christianity or Islam depending on their respective regions through which they had migrated.[192]Muslim Roma are found in Turkey, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, Egypt, Kosovo, Macedonia, and Bulgaria, forming a very significant proportion of the Romani people. In neighboring countries such as Greece most of the Romani inhabitants follow the practice of Orthodoxy. It is likely that the adherence to differing religions prevented families from engaging in intermarriage.[193]

Blessed Ceferino Giménez Malla is recently considered a patron saint of the Romani people in Roman Catholicism.[194]Saint Sarah, or Sara e Kali, has also been venerated as a patron saint in her shrine at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, France. Since the turn of the 21st century, Sara e Kali is understood to have been Kali, an Indian deity brought from India by the refugee ancestors of the Roma people; as the Roma became Christianized, she was absorbed in a syncretic way and worshipped as a saint.[195]

Romanies often adopt the dominant religion of their host country in the event that a ceremony associated with a formal religious institution is necessary, such as a baptism or funeral (their particular belief systems and indigenous religion and worship remain preserved regardless of such adoption processes). The Roma continue to practice "Shaktism", a practice with origins in India, whereby a female consort is required for the worship of a god. Adherence to this practice means that for the Roma who worship the Christian God, prayer is conducted through the Virgin Mary, or her mother, Saint Anne – Shaktism continues over one thousand years after the people's separation from India.[197]

Besides the Roma elders (who serve as spiritual leaders), priests, churches, or bibles do not exist among the Romanies – the only exception is the Pentecostal Roma.[197]

Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro – Islam is the dominant religion among the Roma.[199]

Bulgaria – In northwestern Bulgaria, in addition to Sofia and Kyustendil, Christianity is the dominant faith among Romani people (a major conversion to Eastern Orthodox Christianity among Romani people has occurred). In southeastern Bulgaria, Islam is the dominant religion among Romani people, with a smaller section of the Romani population, declaring themselves as "Turks", continuing to mix ethnicity with Islam.[199]

Croatia – Following the Second World War, a large number of Muslim Roma relocated to Croatia (the majority moving from Kosovo).[199]

Greece – The descendants of groups, such as Sepečides or Sevljara, Kalpazaja, Filipidži and others, living in Athens, Thessaloniki, central Greece and Greek Macedonia are mostly Orthodox Christians, with Islamic beliefs held by a minority of the population. Following the Peace Treaty of Lausanne of 1923, many Muslim Roma moved to Turkey in the subsequent population exchange between Turkey and Greece.[199]

In Ukraine and Russia the Roma populations are also Muslim as the families of Balkan migrants continue to live in these locations. Their ancestors settled on the Crimean peninsula during the 17th and 18th centuries, but then migrated to Ukraine, southern Russia and the Povolzhie (along the Volga River). Formally, Islam is the religion that these communities align themselves with and the people are recognized for their staunch preservation of the Romani language and identity.[199]

Street performance during the Khamoro World Roma Festival in Prague, 2007

Romani music plays an important role in Central and Eastern European countries such as Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Albania, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia and Romania, and the style and performance practices of Romani musicians have influenced European classical composers such as Franz Liszt and Johannes Brahms. The lăutari who perform at traditional Romanian weddings are virtually all Romani.

Probably the most internationally prominent contemporary performers[citation needed] in the lăutari tradition are Taraful Haiducilor. Bulgaria's popular "wedding music", too, is almost exclusively performed by Romani musicians such as Ivo Papasov, a virtuoso clarinetist closely associated with this genre and Bulgarian pop-folk singer Azis.

Another tradition of Romani music is the genre of the Romani brass band, with such notable practitioners as Boban Marković of Serbia, and the brass lăutari groups Fanfare Ciocărlia and Fanfare din Cozmesti of Romania.

Many musical instruments like violins and guitars are said[by whom?] to have originated from the Romani. Many dances such as the flamenco of Spain and Oriental dances of Egypt are also said to have originated from them.[203]

The Romanies of Turkey have achieved musical acclaim from national and local audiences. Local performers usually perform for special holidays. Their music is usually performed on instruments such as the darbuka, gırnata and cümbüş.[204]

Romani contemporary art is art created by Romani people. It emerged at the climax of the process that began in Central and Eastern Europe in the late-1980s, when the interpretation of the cultural practice of minorities was enabled by a paradigm shift, commonly referred to in specialist literature as the Cultural turn. The idea of the "cultural turn" was introduced; and this was also the time when the notion of cultural democracy became crystallized in the debates carried on at various public forums. Civil society gained strength, and civil politics appeared, which is a prerequisite for cultural democracy. This shift of attitude in scholarly circles derived from concerns specific not only to ethnicity, but also to society, gender and class.[205]

There are no concrete statistics for the number of Romani speakers, both in Europe and globally. However, a conservative estimation has been made at 3.5 million speakers in Europe and a further 500,000 elsewhere,[209] although the actual number may be considerably higher. This makes Romani the second largest minority language in Europe, behind Catalan.[208]

In relation to dialect diversity, Romani works in the same way as most other European languages.[210] Cross-dialect communication is dominated by the following features:

All Romani speakers are bilingual, and are accustomed to borrowing words or phrases from a second language; this makes it difficult when trying to communicate with Romanis from different countries

Romani was traditionally a language shared between extended family and a close-knit community. This has resulted in the inability to comprehend dialects from other countries. This is the reason Romani is sometimes associated as being number of different languages.

There is no tradition or example of a literary standard for Romani speakers to use as a guideline for their language use.[210]

The exact origins of slavery in the Danubian Principalities are not known. There is some debate over whether the Romani people came to Wallachia and Moldavia as free men or were brought as slaves. Historian Nicolae Iorga associated the Roma people's arrival with the 1241 Mongol invasion of Europe and considered their slavery as a vestige of that era, in which the Romanians took the Roma as slaves from the Mongols and preserved their status to use their labor. Other historians believe that the Romani were enslaved, while captured during the battles, with the Tatars. The practice of enslaving war prisoners may also have been adopted from the Mongols.[211][page needed]

Some Romani may have been slaves or auxiliary troops of the Mongols or Tatars, but most of them migrated from south of the Danube at the end of the 14th century, some time after the foundation of Wallachia. By then, the institution of slavery was already established in Moldavia and possibly in both principalities. After the Roma migrated into the area, slavery became a widespread practice by the majority population. The Tatar slaves, smaller in numbers, were eventually merged into the Roma population.[214]

Some branches of the Romani people reached Western Europe in the 15th century, fleeing as refugees from the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans.[215] Although the Romani were refugees from the conflicts in southeastern Europe, they were often suspected by certain populations in the West of being associated with the Ottoman invasion because of their physical features seemed related to the Turks. (The Imperial Diet at Landau and Freiburg in 1496–1498 declared that the Romani were spies of the Turks). In Western Europe, such suspicions and discrimination against a people who were a visible minority resulted in persecution, often violent, with efforts to achieve ethnic cleansing until the modern era. In times of social tension, the Romani suffered as scapegoats; for instance, they were accused of bringing the plague during times of epidemics.[216]

On 30 July 1749, Spain conducted The Great Roundup of Romani (Gitanos) in its territory. The Spanish Crown ordered a nationwide raid that led to the break-up of families as all able-bodied men were interned into forced labor camps in an attempt at ethnic cleansing. The measure was eventually reversed and the Gypsies were freed as protests began to arise in different communities, sedentary gypsies being highly esteemed and protected in rural Spain.[217][218]

Later in the 19th century, Romani immigration was forbidden on a racial basis in areas outside Europe, mostly in the English-speaking world. (Argentina in 1880 prohibited immigration by Roma, as did the United States in 1885.)[216]

Deportation of Roma from Asperg, Germany, 1940 (photograph by the Rassenhygienische Forschungsstelle)

In the Habsburg Monarchy under Maria Theresa (1740–1780), a series of decrees tried to force the Romanies to permanently settle, removed rights to horse and wagon ownership (1754), renamed them as "New Citizens" and forced Romani boys into military service if they had no trade (1761), forced them to register with the local authorities (1767), and prohibited marriage between Romanies (1773). Her successor Josef II prohibited the wearing of traditional Romani clothing and the use of the Romani language, punishable by flogging.[219]

In Spain, attempts to assimilate the Gitanos were under way as early as 1619, when Gitanos were forcibly settled, the use of the Romani language was prohibited, Gitano men and women were sent to separate workhouses and their children sent to orphanages. King Charles III took on a more progressive attitude to Gitano assimilation, proclaiming their equal rights as Spanish citizens and ending official denigration based on their race. While he prohibited the nomadic lifestyle, the use of the Calo language, Romani clothing, their trade in horses and other itinerant trades, he also forbade any form of discrimination against them or barring them from the guilds. The use of the word gitano was also forbidden to further assimilation, substituted for "New Castilian", which was also applied to former Jews and Muslims.[220][221]

Most historians agree that Charles III pragmática failed due to three main reasons, ultimately derived from its implementation outside major cities and in marginal areas: The difficulty the Gitano community faced in changing its nomadic lifestyle, the marginal lifestyle in which the community had been driven by society and the serious difficulties of applying the pragmática in the fields of education and work. One author ascribes its failure to the overall rejection by the wider population of the integration of the Gitanos.[219][222]

Other examples of forced assimilation include Norway, where a law was passed in 1896 permitting the state to remove children from their parents and place them in state institutions.[223] This resulted in some 1,500 Romani children being taken from their parents in the 20th century.[224]

The persecution of the Romanies reached a peak during World War II in the Porajmos, the genocide perpetrated by the Nazis during the Holocaust. In 1935, the Nuremberg laws stripped the Romani people living in Nazi Germany of their citizenship, after which they were subjected to violence, imprisonment in concentration camps and later genocide in extermination camps. The policy was extended in areas occupied by the Nazis during the war, and it was also applied by their allies, notably the Independent State of Croatia, Romania and Hungary.

Because no accurate pre-war census figures exist for the Romanis, it is impossible to accurately assess the actual number of victims. Most estimates for numbers of Romani victims of the Holocaust fall between 200,000 and 500,000, although figures ranging between 90,000 and 4 million have been proposed. Lower estimates do not include those killed in all Axis-controlled countries. A detailed study by Sybil Milton, formerly senior historian at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum gave a figure of at least a minimum of 220,000, possibly closer to 500,000.[225]Ian Hancock, Director of the Program of Romani Studies and the Romani Archives and Documentation Center at the University of Texas at Austin, argues in favour of a higher figure of between 500,000 and 1,500,000.[226]

In Europe, Romani people are associated with poverty, are accused of high rates of crime and behaviours that are perceived by the rest of the population as being antisocial or inappropriate.[228] Partly for this reason, discrimination against the Romani people has continued to the present day,[229][230] although efforts are being made to address them.[231]Amnesty International reports continued instances of Antizigan discrimination during the 20th Century, particularly in Romania, Serbia,[232]Slovakia,[233]Hungary,[234]Slovenia,[235] and Kosovo.[236] The European Union has recognized that discrimination against Romani must be addressed, and with the national Roma integration strategy they encourage member states to work towards greater Romani inclusion and upholding the rights of the Romani in the European union.[237]

*projections for Serbia also include up to 97.000 Roma IDPs in Serbia[239]

The Romanis of Kosovo have been severely persecuted by ethnic Albanians since the end of the Kosovo War, and the region's Romani community is, for the most part, annihilated.[240]

Czechoslovakia carried out a policy of sterilization of Romani women, starting in 1973.[241] The dissidents of the Charter 77 denounced it in 1977–78 as a genocide, but the practice continued through the Velvet Revolution of 1989.[242] A 2005 report by the Czech Republic's independent ombudsman, Otakar Motejl, identified dozens of cases of coercive sterilization between 1979 and 2001, and called for criminal investigations and possible prosecution against several health care workers and administrators.[243]

In 2008, following the brutal rape and subsequent murder of an Italian woman in Rome at the hands of a young man from a local Romani encampment,[244] the Italian government declared that Italy's Romani population represented a national security risk and that swift action was required to address the emergenza nomadi (nomad emergency).[245] Specifically, officials in the Italian government accused the Romanies of being responsible for rising crime rates in urban areas.

The 2008 deaths of Cristina and Violetta Djeordsevic, two Roma children who drowned while Italian beach-goers remained unperturbed, brought international attention to the relationship between Italians and the Roma people. Reviewing the state of play in 2012, one Belgian magazine observed:

On International Roma Day, which falls on 8 April, the significant proportion of Europe's 12 million Roma who live in deplorable conditions will not have much to celebrate. And poverty is not the only worry for the community. Ethnic tensions are on the rise. In 2008, Roma camps came under attack in Italy, intimidation by racist parliamentarians is the norm in Hungary. Speaking in 1993, Václav Havel prophetically remarked that "the treatment of the Roma is a litmus test for democracy": and democracy has been found wanting. The consequences of the transition to capitalism have been disastrous for the Roma. Under communism they had jobs, free housing and schooling. Now many are unemployed, many are losing their homes and racism is increasingly rewarded with impunity.[246]

The 2016 Pew Research poll found that Italians, in particular, hold strong anti-Roma views, with 82% of Italians expressing negative opinions about Roma. In Greece 67%, in Hungary 64%, in France 61%, in Spain 49%, in Poland 47%, in the UK 45%, in Sweden 42%, in Germany 40%, and in the Netherlands 37% have an unfavourable view of Roma.[247]

In the summer of 2010 French authorities demolished at least 51 illegal Roma camps and began the process of repatriating their residents to their countries of origin.[248] This followed tensions between the French state and Roma communities, which had been heightened after French police opened fire and killed a traveller who drove through a police checkpoint, hitting an officer, and attempted to hit two more officers at another checkpoint. In retaliation a group of Roma, armed with hatchets and iron bars, attacked the police station of Saint-Aignan, toppled traffic lights and road signs and burned three cars.[249][250] The French government has been accused of perpetrating these actions to pursue its political agenda.[251] EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding stated that the European Commission should take legal action against France over the issue, calling the deportations "a disgrace". Purportedly, a leaked file dated 5 August, sent from the Interior Ministry to regional police chiefs included the instruction: "Three hundred camps or illegal settlements must be cleared within three months, Roma camps are a priority."[252]

Many depictions of Romani people in literature and art present romanticized narratives of mystical powers of fortune telling or irascible or passionate temper paired with an indomitable love of freedom and a habit of criminality. Romani were a popular subject in Venetian painting from the time of Giorgione at the start of the 16th century; the inclusion of such a figure adds an exotic oriental flavour to scenes. A VenetianRenaissance painting by Paris Bordone (ca. 1530, Strasbourg) of the Holy Family in Egypt makes Elizabeth, a gypsy fortune-teller; the scene is otherwise located in a distinctly European landscape.[253]

^This is a census figure. Some 1,236,810 (6.14% of the population) did not declare any ethnicity. There was not any option for a person to declare multiple ethnicities.

^This is a census figure. Some 736,981 (10% of the population) did not declare any ethnicity. There was not any option for a person to declare multiple ethnicities. In a report of the census’ authors, the ethnic results of this census are identified as a "gross manipulation".

^This is a census figure. There was an option to declare multiple ethnicities, so this figure includes Romani of multiple backgrounds. Some 1,398,731 (14.1% of the population) did not declare any ethnicity.

^"Falta de políticas públicas para ciganos é desafio para o governo" [Lack of public policy for Romani is a challenge for the administration] (in Portuguese). R7. 2011. Archived from the original on 11 January 2012. Retrieved 22 January 2012. The Special Secretariat for the Promotion of Racial Equality estimates the number of "ciganos" (Romanis) in Brazil at 800,000 (2011). The 2010 IBGE Brazilian National Census encountered gypsy camps in 291 of Brazil's 5,565 municipalities.

^"The Situation of Roma in Spain"(PDF). Open Society Institute. 2002. Archived from the original(PDF) on 1 December 2007. Retrieved 15 September 2010. The Spanish government estimates the number of Gitanos at a maximum of 650,000.

^"Situation of Roma in France at crisis proportions". EurActiv Network. 7 December 2005. Retrieved 21 October 2015. According to the report, the settled Gypsy population in France is officially estimated at around 500,000, although other estimates say that the actual figure is much closer to 1.2 million.

^Gorce, Bernard (22 July 2010). "Roms, gens du voyage, deux réalités différentes". La Croix. Retrieved 21 October 2016. [MANUAL TRANS.] The ban prevents statistics on ethnicity to give a precise figure of French Roma, but we often quote the number 350,000. For travellers, the administration counted 160,000 circulation titles in 2006 issued to people aged 16 to 80 years. Among the travellers, some have chosen to buy a family plot where they dock their caravans around a local section (authorized since the Besson Act of 1990).

^ abcGall, Timothy L, ed. (1998), Worldmark Encyclopedia of Culture & Daily Life, 4. Europe, Cleveland, OH: Eastword, pp. 316, 318, 'Religion: An underlay of Hinduism with an overlay of either Christianity or Islam (host country religion)'; Roma religious beliefs are rooted in Hinduism. Roma believe in a universal balance, called kuntari... Despite a 1,000-year separation from India, Roma still practice 'shaktism', the worship of a god through his female consort...

^Hancock 2002, p. xx: 'While a nine century removal from India has diluted Indian biological connection to the extent that for some Romanian groups, it may be hardly representative today, Sarren (1976:72) concluded that we still remain together, genetically, Asian rather than European'

^ abKenrick, Donald (2007). Historical Dictionary of the Gypsies (Romanies) (2nd ed.). Scarecrow Press. p. xxxvii. The Gypsies, or Romanies, are an ethnic group that arrived in Europe around the 14th century. Scholars argue about when and how they left India, but it is generally accepted that they did emigrate from northern India some time between the 6th and 11th centuries, then crossed the Middle East and came into Europe.

^"Romani"(PDF). Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. Oxford: Elsevier. p. 1. Retrieved 30 August 2009. In some regions of Europe, especially the western margins (Britain, the Iberian peninsula), Romani-speaking communities have given up their language in favor of the majority language, but have retained Romani-derived vocabulary as an in-group code. Such codes, for instance Angloromani (Britain), Caló (Spain), or Rommani (Scandinavia) are usually referred to as Para-Romani varieties.

^ abcdJurová, Anna (2003). Vaščka, Michal; Jurásková, Martina; Nicholson, Tom, eds. "From Leaving The Homeland to the First Assimilation Measures"(PDF). Čačipen Pal O Roma – A Global Report on Roma in Slovakia. Slovakia: 17. Retrieved 7 September 2013. the Sinti lived in German territory, the Manusha in France, the Romanitsel in England, the Kale in Spain and Portugal, and the Kaale in Finland.

^Jurová, Anna (2003). Vaščka, Michal; Jurásková, Martina; Nicholson, Tom, eds. "From Leaving The Homeland to the First Assimilation Measures"(PDF). Čačipen Pal O Roma – A Global Report on Roma in Slovakia. Slovak Republic: 17. Archived from the original(PDF) on 3 December 2013. Retrieved 7 September 2013. The word "manush" is also included in all dialects of Romany. It means man, while "Manusha" equals people. This word has the same form and meaning in Sanskrit as well, and is almost identical in other Indian languages.

^Mendizabal et. al (2012) "Our results further indicate that after a rapid migration with moderate gene flow from the Near or Middle East, the European spread of the Romani people was via the Balkans starting ∼0.9 kya."

Sancar Seckiner's comprehensible book South (Güney), published July 2013, consists of 12 article and essays. One of them, Ikiçeşmelik, highlights Turkish Romani People's life. Ref. ISBN978-605-4579-45-7.

Sancar Seckiner' s new book Thilda's House (Thilda'nın Evi), published March 2017, underlines struggle of Istanbul Romani People who have been swept away from nearby Kadikoy. Ref. ISBN978-605-4160-88-4.

Shot in remote areas of the Thar desert in Northwest India, Jaisalmer Ayo: Gateway of the Gypsies on YouTube captures the lives of vanishing nomadic communities who are believed to share common ancestors with the Roma people – released 2004